obituaries It was an unusual brief. For the


first six months or so, he felt the lobby resented him, free as he was from the routine tasks and getting his information from unconventional sources. But it worked. A leak of plans for the Royal


David Hencke


When he was a young journalist, David Hencke, who has died from cancer aged 79, discovered something he loved doing and that he was very good at: finding things out that rich and powerful people would rather we didn’t know and telling us. He spent the rest of his life doing it. His first award, EMAP Reporter


of the Year, came in 1971 for telling readers of the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph about a secret plan for a ring road in Wellingborough. Ten, on the Times Higher


Education Supplement, he started getting leaked reports on education and training. Tese followed him to the Guardian


in 1976, where he did his most sensational work. In 1979 he exposed government


plans to close 41 railway lines, and these proposals were quickly vetoed by transport secretary Norman Fowler. His 1983 investigation into Help the Aged changed the way the charity spent its money after it exposed waste and, that same year, he exposed neglect and squalor in mental hospitals. Tere was much more. By 1986, he


was established as a top investigative journalist, and Te Guardian gave him the best vantage point he could hope for: it made him Westminster correspondent, part of the paper’s lobby staff but not of it, with a roving brief to find stories no one else had.


A newsman who inspired scores of trainee journalists at Darlington College during an international career has died. Pete Snowdon was 78. Born in


Lincolnshire and the middle of three children, he spent a year studying law before deciding to seek a career as a reporter. He joined a local newspaper as a junior in the early 1970s – a time when the industry was thriving and even a modest- circulation weekly could justify an editor, three reporters, a photographer and a receptionist. Two other trainees from that time


Pete Snowdon


were ourselves – Nick Pigott and Geoff Meade – and we remained lifelong friends. Te two of us went on to make our names in magazines and broadcasting. and were at Pete’s funeral in Ruislip crematorium in west London.


Opera House to become a kind of theme park came his way in 1989, and the plans were quickly dropped. Te same year, he exposed plans for the government secretly to pay £38 million to British Aerospace to persuade them to buy the state- owned Rover Group. In 1998, he broke the story of


Peter Mandelson’s home loan from Geoffrey Robinson, bringing about Mandelson’s and Robinson’s resignations. Most famously, Hencke broke the


cash for questions story in 1994, showing that some Conservative MPs were taking money to ask questions in parliament. Lobbyist Ian Greer and Ian Hamilton MP sued and lost, and Hencke won Journalist of the Year. Tere was much, much more.


After the turn of the century, David and I wrote three books: Te Blairs and Teir Court (2004), then Marching to the Fault Line (2009), the story of the 1984–85 miners’ strike, and Blair Inc (2015), about Blair’s lucrative post-premiership. So I was privileged to watch the


best investigative journalist of our generation at work.


“Tose were golden days,” recalled


Geoff. “Pete was a brilliant journalist with a wicked sense of humour. We laughed so much, I wonder how we ever got a paper out.” Pete moved to the Lincolnshire


Chronicle as a sub-editor but left in 1973 to spend six months backpacking across the US. On his return, he landed a post


with the BBC in London before being recruited by Canadian broadcaster CBS. Having moved to Toronto, he met


Gloria who was working as a political speechwriter. Tey married in Bromley, Kent, after moving back to Britain in 1979 and had two children, Maximilian and Montserrat. For several years, the family


shuttled across the Atlantic, repeatedly working and living alternatively in Canada and the UK.


He was blessed with a


wonderfully retentive memory, and an appearance and a set of mannerisms that suggested he was harmless, naive and scatty – a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I remember the two of us at lunch


with a senior politician who told us a wonderful story. David did not seem to take much notice. But, as soon as we were alone, David started swaying in his chair – always a sign that he was excited – while he repeated in fine detail what we had just heard. He spent hours with dense,


dusty documents, because there were often secrets buried deep inside them. He looked for contacts who were


on their way up or down. And, when he had something no one else knew, he was bursting to tell the world. Investigative journalism wasn’t a trade – it was a mission. So when he left Te Guardian in


2009, he carried on doing it – for the Exaro website, for Tribune magazine, for Byline Times and also for his own blog. In his last week, dreadfully ill


though he was, he was still trying to finish a story. David’s beloved wife Margaret


died in 2024. He is survived by his daughter Anne and five grandchildren.


Francis Beckett Tey lived in Lancaster,


Richmond and Darlington while Pete taught journalism students at Darlington College. In 2009, the marriage broke down


and, the following year Pete moved to live in Spain with his new wife Myriam. He settled happily near Almería and became a fluent Spanish speaker. He enjoyed travelling widely and


had an insatiable love of learning, teaching himself both Russian and Latin. He also enjoyed theatre and classical music, photography and playing acoustic guitar. He was a great character who will


be much missed by family, friends and former students who owe their careers to a teacher who instilled his own passion for journalism.


Nick Pigott and Geoff Meade theJournalist | 23


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